Stringers Spotlight: Spencer Madden's 5-Diamond Box Traditional

New to the Stringers Spotlight but well known on The Lacrosse Forums as LAXFreak04, Spencer Madden hails from Eugene, Oregon, where he is an assistant coach at South Eugene High School, his alma mater. A sophomore at the University of Oregon, Spencer played in the past for one of Rhino's travel teams and later at the University of Portland, before transferring.

While Spencer is unfortunately no longer playing, he's doing some fantastic work over on the Forums. (See his Megathread here.) We connected with Spencer to have him try his hand at a number of pockets. The first piece of work by Spencer also requires a bit of an introduction, as it's a factory-pinched Warrior Evo 2.0, with a teal to silver chrome fade that Justin "Smitty" Smith, of the Charlotte Hounds, wanted ILGear.com to see and have strung up. The chrome finish is the work of the Mueller Corporation, the company Smitty has worked with in helping drive the chrome craze. (He's got some other super cool treats that he's sent our way, so stay tuned for those too.)

For this one, we still had some lingering thoughts of the Rochester Knighthawks and their terrific run to the 2012 NLL Champion's Cup. And so it made sense to hook Spencer up with some tan leathers, white cross lace and purple shooting strings from Lacrosse Unlimited to make this look and feel like a tribute to the Knighthawks' accomplishments. And because we wanted it to have strong hold, we asked Spencer to make a wide, 5-diamond traditional.

"I love Evos, chrome, Knighthawks colors, and trads," Spencer says. "This was simple to string and took the least time, but still is a tricky pocket to get right. I prefer stringing my pockets as defined as possible, which when done correctly adds a ton of hold and not necessarily any whip. I added the extra shooter to provide a really smooth release, because sometimes defined trades lip a bit more. The key for these for me is to string it all through loose just to get the placement of the interlocks, then go back and tighten it up."